


Under the Dust

by inK_AddicTion



Category: Steven Universe (Cartoon)
Genre: F/F, Fusion, Slight horror
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-21
Updated: 2017-02-05
Packaged: 2018-09-19 02:27:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,391
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9414017
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inK_AddicTion/pseuds/inK_AddicTion
Summary: Young Yellow Diamond and Blue Diamond go exploring in a forbidden wing of White Diamond's palace, and discover a hidden facet of White's dark past that could explain why they are the only ones of their kind.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Uses my usual headcanons for the Diamonds.

The day that young Yellow and Blue learned to truly fear their formidable elder, White Diamond, was the same day they learned that diamonds were not as unbreakable as they had been taught.

It started with a clandestine exploration into the unused parts of the west wing of the lunar palace White ruled Homeworld’s empire from. Homeworld itself had been tunnelled and torn asunder many centuries ago, and was now a fractured and unstable shell of the powerful planet it had been once. Supposedly, gemkind had been born there. Yellow doubted it. It looked so weak and broken.

The west wing was the oldest part of the palace, and the walls were made of some rough organic stone, pitted and scarred with age. It was a far cry from the rest of the palace, austere and dignified. Even the ceilings were stooped low, strange powdery remnants dusted along the guttering of the once ornately tiled floors. The decayed breath of grandeur was almost tangible, as if the ghost music that had once been played here still filled the empty hallways.

“We are not supposed to be here,” Blue was hissing, but she still craned her head around to see everything from her vantage point in Yellow’s arms. Her dark hair unspooled over her shoulders and swished as Yellow walked, brushing Yellow’s knees. One arm was hooked around Yellow’s neck, and the gem on her chest blazed brightly, lighting the way.

“Where’s your sense of adventure?” Yellow teased, peering into each darkened passageway with innate curiosity. She carried Blue effortlessly, the measured tread of her steps echoing off the empty walls.

“I’m here, aren’t I?” Blue replied tartly.

“Only because you’d fear me accidentally cracking myself if you let me go alone,” countered Yellow.

“You attract disasters like magnetite. It would be irresponsible to let you go alone, and you’re so stubborn I knew you’d go exploring eventually, with or without me.” Blue did not mention the fact that she herself would be useless without Yellow to carry her, or that she would spend the entire time worrying until she came back.

“I’m hurt by your lack of confidence – wait, what’s that?” Yellow’s sharp eyes had caught the gleam of metal down one passageway they had passed. Without waiting for Blue’s approval, she turned around and headed towards the glint.

“I believe,” said Blue as they drew closer, “that’s commonly known as a door, Yellow.”

“I knew that!” Yellow snapped. “I wonder where it leads?”

Resettling her hold on Blue to free one hand, despite Blue’s aggravated protests, Yellow pushed experimentally against the door. It barely moved, but it did budge the barest crack. It was very cold, very stiff, and by the look of it, quite ancient.

“Hold on a minute, Blue,” said Yellow absentmindedly, gently setting Blue Diamond down on the floor. Blue propped herself against the wall and watched with curiosity as Yellow set her shoulder against the door.

Yellow slammed her shoulder into the metal, slightly overzealously. The metal buckled and shrieked its surrender instantly, sending Yellow staggering forward into the uncovered room. The foul stench of old air flooded out, and Blue’s eyes stung. Coughing, she waited for the noxious gas to pass. Yellow was still inside the room; Blue heard her hushed gasp of amazement.

“Blue, you need to see this.”

Awkwardly peering around the doorway as much she could without leaning on her weak arms, Blue demanded with no small amount of impatience, “What is it? Tell me!”

But Yellow didn’t answer, instead she strode back to Blue, her eyes alight and burning with delight at a puzzle. She was grinning, a great wild sort of grin, like the one of feverish ecstasy she had given Blue the first time they had met, and Blue had told her that she was a diamond just like Yellow. To Yellow, born without the intuitive knowledge of all gems, the unexpected knowledge that she had a companion who was rather more sympathetic to her disadvantage than White had been was tremendously important. Blue had felt rather the same.

She reached down and scooped up Blue as if she weighed nothing more than a sack of feathers, which, Blue supposed she did to Yellow’s seemingly boundless physical strength. In the few short steps it took Yellow to reach the inside of the room, Blue puzzled over what could have enticed Yellow so. Some secret of White’s? Despite herself, Blue found herself deeply curious.

She lit up her gem without being asked as soon as they crossed the threshold. The brightness bounced back off the wall almost blindingly, and immediately she lowered the intensity of the light – then stared in wonder.

It was a mural. Veins of faintly luminescent rock shot through the polished metal, curving shapes that filled shadows on the wall. It was a bas-relief of metal and rock, bumpy and rigid, a tapestry of texture. The strange, powerful figures it depicted were done in a style completely alien to the clinical white functionality of Homeworld. It was like nothing Yellow or Blue had ever seen.

The deep clefts and shadows spilled across faces twisted forever into hideous war cries. Raised edges like scars depicted gems, all over their bodies, lumpy and malformed. They were all shapes and sizes, all shades of brown and white and grey, completely unrecognisable from any organised gem type Blue knew. There was a fierce primal brutality in the primordial struggle, gems clawing at other with clubby hands and teeth, fighting like animals in the dirt, reckless and vicious in their struggle for survival. To Yellow and Blue, raised in the superiority of the gem empire, never having raised a weapon anything in their lives, it was world changing, life shattering, stupendously at odds with the principles they had been raised with from the moment they had emerged.

“Who are they, Blue?” asked Yellow in wonder. She stepped to the left to examine some part of the mural more closely, then froze as shifting Blue’s shining gem caused navy shadows flicker across the walls, making it appear as if the fighting gems were about to leap from the confinement of the rock.

It stung to admit her ignorance. “I don’t know,” said Blue. “I’ve never seen anything like this.”

Yellow glanced down her, quickly, no doubt as off-balance as Blue was. They were both used to Blue explaining away all the gaps in Yellow’s knowledge. For the first time, it seemed to sink in that they had found something important, something that had no doubt been buried for a reason.

“Wait – take a closer look at this one,” said Yellow, her sharper eyes noting a bizarre familiarity with the touch of dread. “She has a diamond on her forehead, just like…” Her voice trailed off, and her yellow cheeks turned a sickly jaundice yellow.

“White,” Blue completed in a mere whisper.

The figure was undoubtedly White Diamond. Her features had been lovingly carved, right down to the familiar narrow slant of the disapproving eyes. Her expression was so wholly alien that it was a wonder Yellow had recognised her at all. Her face was warped into a snarl of leviathan proportions, a bitter fury of hate and battle-lust that made shivers run down their spines. In one hand, she wielded a wicked mace, which was cracking down on the skull of another gem with a diamond set in her shoulder. At her side, there was a shorter gem, brown, who clasped White Diamond’s free hand and wielded a crude spear in her other.

“Diamonds fighting diamonds,” Yellow said in a strange fascinated horror. “I didn’t know – I thought White was the _only_ diamond.”

“She was!” Blue insisted. “I’ve never heard mention of anyone else – well apart from us – there never were other diamonds!”

“Well,” said Yellow logically, “clearly there were, otherwise someone wouldn’t have carved them all like this. It’s far too detailed for imagination. Right?”

“Then… What happened to them? Why aren’t they still… here?”

Blue and Yellow shared a look of fear and shock. Trepidation crawled up Blue’s spine. If they were caught – Blue had no doubt that White would be furious to know that they had uncovered this secret.

“We really shouldn’t be here,” Blue whispered.

“No,” grated horribly familiar voice from behind them, “you really shouldn’t.”

Later, Blue would remember that Yellow’s first instinct was to whirl around and hold Blue tighter, protectively, angling her shoulders down so that a blow might fall there instead of hitting Blue, and feel a startling warmth for her. But in that moment, there was nothing but pure terror, and a nasty, creeping, crawling guilt.

“White!” She heard herself shriek, felt herself clutch convulsively onto Yellow.

White Diamond was silhouetted in the doorway, a massive and furious shape. Hot bright fury radiated from her palpably; Blue could just see the burn of her incandescent pale eyes, the savage glow of her gem as she fought the urge to draw her weapon. With her shoulders squared and tense, her hands knotted into fists, she looked angrier than Blue had ever seen her, angrier even when they had both come out defective.

She did not shout. It was worse than shouting. Instead her voice was low and tightly controlled, each word spat with effort around clenched teeth. The fact that she did not shout told them both how hard she was forcing a far worse reaction down.

“You know this wing is off-limits, and you defied me, in complete awareness of this knowledge.”

Neither of them were stupid enough to lie to her face. Blue found herself shaking, quivering pathetically. She had never liked confrontation, certainly not against _White,_ the pure pinnacle of gem perfection. Yellow’s thumb smoothed against her knee, comfortingly reminding her that she was not alone. Blue felt Yellow’s body coiling with wiry muscle, preparing to spring to either side, preparing for a fight.

White noticed. Blue saw her nostrils flare, the wind moaned low outside. She could physically hear White’s teeth grinding in an effort to control herself.

“Do you mock me?” White enquired, low and dangerous. “Do you soil the one place I have left untouched?”

“Mock you?” The words burst out of Blue before she could hold them back. “How could we –“

**_“DO NOT LIE TO ME!”_ **

White’s voice thundered through the room so loudly the walls shook and dust rained down from the ceiling. The force of it drove Yellow to one knee, and Blue felt herself glitch in response to the overpowering cry. Desperately, she scrabbled for control over her physical form, grasping onto Yellow to stabilise herself. Apparently noticing the effect her unbridled voice had on them, White visibly reigned herself in.

After a short moment when they both appeared to have recovered, White spoke again at almost a hiss. Her cloak flapped around her ankles and an imposing wind bore down into the small room, scouring the walls.

“Do you seek to challenge me?” Her eyes were alight with cold hate and an ancient panic, distorting her noble face. She stalked closer, every inch of her body taut and straight and radiating with power, positively rolling off her like a particularly intoxicating perfume. She was gloriously unhinged in threat, magnificent in her poison presence, like a snow leopard closing in on wounded prey too starstruck to run away.

This time, it was Yellow who shivered.

Only Blue seemed aware of the sudden and imminent danger White posed. She tugged on Yellow, weakly at first then with increasing vigour when Yellow didn’t respond. White’s shadow loomed over them, grand and cold. Her gem was glowing, pulsing with anticipation for a fight. Yellow’s gem flickered uncertainly in response, and Blue hastily tried to muffle it with her robe.

“Of –“ Blue started, but White moved so suddenly that she panicked. Barely a moment later, Blue knew it for a feint, but the damage had been done.

Instinctively, she had grabbed for Yellow, but Blue had fatally misjudged Yellow’s trance of receptivity. Everything of Yellow flooded into her and was known in turn, and bright white light overwhelmed her as her mind fell apart like it had been unravelled at the seams, their edges fitting together like puzzle pieces put back together after a lifetime of separation, and everything that was Yellow and Blue mixed seamlessly into something that wasn’t quite either of them, but felt like something new and the same and coming home all at once.

For half a second, Green Diamond and White Diamond stared at each other with identical expressions of incredulity on their faces. And then, in an instant, White reacted.

Her mace formed in her hand in a flash of light, and with a roar, she sprang at Green Diamond, who tried to backpedal and tripped over legs that felt far too long, banging her head on the low ceiling. Instinctively, Green swung a fist at White, who expertly dodged, using Green’s overextended punch to duck under her arm and swing her mace at Green’s unprotected head. Through pure dumb luck rather than any sort of expertise, one of Green’s flailing hands hit White with enough force to send her crashing to the floor. A twist of wind had White back on her almost immediately, but she didn’t charge again, circling warily at the edge of the inexperienced Green’s reach, judging her for weaknesses.

White smiled, and it was not a nice smile. She inhaled, steadily, and the wind around her rose, whipping in her cloak and tossing her hair, building to such a cyclone fury that White lifted from the floor. The mustering of her power was a slow show designed to intimidate, and it worked, paralysed, Green cringed back against the rough wall. She knew suddenly as surely she knew anything else that what was coming would not be pleasant.

Then White howled.

The volume of her voice struck Green Diamond like a physical blow. It was overwhelming, immeasurably painful, and wiped away anything, any thought in its sheer overpowering intensity. The fusion wobbled, clung on for a moment longer, then split apart with such force that the two components rocketed across the room as if they were polarised magnets. Blue Diamond hit the wall with an audible crack and instantly her form vanished into white smoke. The thud of Yellow’s landing shook the room, and masked the sad little clink Blue Diamond’s gem made as it hit the floor.

White allowed the gathered winds to dissipate, breathing deeply to calm herself. Her gem was still glowing with the brightness of a sun. Yellow stirred with a dull groan, glitching as she struggled to move. She managed to raise herself on one elbow, staring hazily across the room and trying to remember something important.

There was someone – there was someone –

White watched blankly as Yellow flung herself to her feet and all but launched herself across the room to the yellow-flecked blue diamond unprotected on the floor. White wondered if Yellow knew she was babbling nonsense as she gathered the gem in her hands with impossible gentleness, checking every facet for a single scratch. Yellow uttered a deep groan when Blue was unharmed, hunching over her gem convulsively.

“Calm yourself,” White heard herself saying harshly. “It’s pathetic. It would take far more than that to shatter a diamond. I know.”

Yellow twisted to look at her, and White saw sudden fear congeal in her eyes, and felt that fear strike her as if it were White herself who had hit the wall. The wound reopened too many others, old ones, and White bypassed shame to retreat straight back to the comforting numbness of anger.

“Get out!” She ordered, “Take her with you!”

Yellow Diamond did not need to be told twice. Clutching Blue’s gem to her, she scurried from the room.

The dark eyes of the mural watched White. Suddenly anguished, she gazed up into those implacable stone eyes, begging those silent shadows of the past only she remembered for something they were incapable of granting. Brown Diamond, loyally at White Diamond’s side forever in the rock carved before the centuries that had split them apart, seemed to soften her countenance, and maybe it was the flickering light, but she shook her head in disapproval weighted like hammer blows.

“What are you looking at?” White snarled, then turned on her heel and left the ghosts to their forgotten darkness.


	2. Chapter 2

Reforming was always an uncomfortable and exhausting process for Blue. She was reduced to her gem far more easily than any normal diamond should be, but familiarity only bred contempt for the process. She had changed nothing about her appearance, and fell forward in a heap of hair and cloak the moment the bright glow of her reformation dimmed.

Yellow caught her. The familiar safety of Yellow’s arms wrapping around her torso and holding upright was offset by Yellow’s irritated curses; Blue had fallen through several screens that Yellow was hastily dismissing with her free hand, the hot glow of sienna-orange across her cheeks indicating, had it been anyone else, that she had been up to something illicit.

Blue Diamond raised an eyebrow at her. Yellow avoided her eyes, slowly lowering both of them until Blue was draped across Yellow, sat cross-legged. Struggling to catch her breath from the reformation, Blue allowed her face to rest against Yellow’s shoulder, anchoring herself with Yellow’s warmth and solidity. The first few seconds afterwards were always the worst, her body felt pounded flat and stretched out, weak, as if a few hollow vibrations would shake her apart. Yellow held her with the cautious yet tight grip of someone who feared that she would evaporate out of her arms the moment Yellow looked away, her muscles tense and rigid, yet leaving a few millimetres of space between her arms and Blue to avoid direct contact, a constricting cage that aimed not to crush.

Blue breathed. Yellow always seem to smell of a combination of warm fabric and hot oil, like a rag dipped in paraffin, ready to combust. The heavy texture of her clothes was thick and rough against Blue’s cheek, raspy like an unshaven beard; Blue had always had sensitive skin, easy to tear like the peeled papery shell of an onion, somewhat translucent so that the shape of bones underneath showed through, round and bulbous. Their physical forms were as different as soft chalk and hearty cheese. Every inch of Yellow was compact with solid muscle with little extraneous fat, leaving her mannish in shape, small-breasted and thin-hipped with long, carded limbs and broad hands. White had called them _bismuth’s paws,_ once, but Blue liked the dexterity of the stubby fingers with their short, rounded nails, the strength in the flat palms.

“Hello,” murmured Blue, eventually. She nestled her forehead into the crook of Yellow’s neck, Yellow’s sharp chin pressing briefly against her temple.

“You’re back,” said Yellow, relaxing some of her death grip on the space around Blue.

“You’re here.”

“Where else would I be?” asked Yellow rhetorically, quirking an eyebrow. In the green-tinted light of their shared chambers, her eyes glittered like pennies, and her blush deep brown-ochre.

“You have your own duties to attend to,” said Blue, batting back. White did not leave them idle, she seemed to think that they would cause trouble if they had nothing to do. Which, considering the events that had led to Blue being reduced her gem, seemed in hindsight very reasonable.

“I did some work, whilst you were gone.” Yellow avoided her eyes, the colour over her nose and cheeks deepening. She was so obviously evading the truth that Blue felt the need to restrain a smile. It was a testament to Yellow’s resilient character that she still tried to hide things from Blue, despite knowing how ultimately futile it would be.

With a few impatient flicks of her fingers, she brought up some glowing white screens. Around them, complex mathematical sketches leapt into view, the design for some new ship, notes and annotations made in Yellow’s angular and spidery writing. By the look of it, she had been improving the design of the ship she had been working on in her free time before their adventure into the bowels of the palace’s unused west wing. The design looked completely different from the last time she had seen it. It would have taken a team of peridots thousands of rotations to suggest the advanced technological changes that came so readily and easily to Yellow.

“How long?” The question came out in a papery sigh. Blue felt Yellow swallow.

“Two hundred and twelve point nine one seven standard rotations, eighteen hours, thirty three minutes and approximately fourteen seconds,” Yellow answered, as exact as ever.

“And you honestly expect me to believe, that those,” said Blue, gesturing at the ship designs around them, “occupied _this_ “, she tapped the centre of Yellow’s forehead with one fingertip, “for over two-hundred rotations of being stuck in one room? Because if I know you at all, and I do, you haven’t left me or this room once since you brought me here.”

Yellow’s cheeks flushed such a deep orange that it spread down her neck and, Blue knew, over her chest. “Yes,” she insisted stubbornly.

“Yellow, what is the use of trying to lie to me?” Blue inquired. “Even if it wasn’t to me, you’re terrible at it.”

“It’s not _finished_ ,” said Yellow, with a definite hint of petulance. “You’re not allowed to look unless it’s finished!”

“You’re still going to show me anyway,” Blue said, a sly grin creeping over her face. “Come on Yellow, don’t force me to _make_ you show me.” She hooked one arm around Yellow’s broad shoulders, lightly tugging on the short hairs of the nape of Yellow’s neck.

_“Blue-!_ That’s not fair!” Yellow whined.

Blue’s fingernails scratched faintly over Yellow’s scalp, her skinny, bony fingers pushing with slight difficulty through Yellow’s thick, messy hair. “This is more tangle than hair, Yellow. I never understand how you make it so… _stiff.”_

“Force of will,” muttered Yellow, deeply disgruntled. She was blushing again, trying to hide it behind gruffness.

“Show me what you’re working on.”

“No.”

“Please?”

“No!”

“Show me anyway?”

_“BLUE!”_

“You want to show me.”

“I don’t!

“You do!”

“It’s not finished!”

“You’re still going to show me anyway!” Blue wheedled.

“ _Fine!”_ cried Yellow, explosively. “But you’re not allowed to say anything, it’s still in its design stages, and you were gone so some of the measurements are a little inaccurate, and well – here.”

Carefully, Yellow lifted Blue and set her against the wall, then flung herself to her feet, dismissing the ship design screens with a few violent swipes of her hand and tapping in a quick access code. New screens appeared in a blaze of light around them in the circular panoramic style that Yellow preferred when she was designing, highly technical equations sprawling down the left side, in neat rows like soldiers lining up for parade, the right occupied with odd esoteric sketches – an arm, broken down to muscle and bone, thick tubes like borrowing grubs inserted into the sketch, a foot, some odd contraption that Blue thought was a spine, metals jotted akimbo for their properties questioned beside them, everywhere, questions and concepts outlined in glowing text, angry negations next to many of them, queries – as if someone had opened up Yellow’s head and removed the feverish thought process and printed it in the form of flickering light screens, relentlessly creative, fastidiously detailed with numbers and symbols personal to Yellow that Blue couldn’t hope to decode, shorthand for theories of physics and biology and matter that Blue hadn’t even heard of.

Blue’s triumphant smirk faded into confusion, and something like wonder. Yellow was pacing, explaining hurriedly, embarrassed, every statement punctuated with some agonised comment about how it wasn’t yet finished, how everything was still so rushed.

“Yellow,” Blue interrupted, “it looks very detailed but…”

“You don’t like it.” Yellow’s shoulders slumped and bowed as if she had just been slapped, and her hands fidgeted with each other, awkward and ashamed and suddenly too aware of the space that she took up in the room. She always seemed to grow taller like this, bulkier; trying to minimise a massive body only made her more obvious. Blue hated to see her do it.

“It was only an idea,” Yellow hurried on, half-frantic, “You don’t have to like it of course. I should have asked first, I was just thinking, it was my fault that you were – gone – if I had been faster, and you were stuck with me, and I was just – _transfixed,_ like, like some lowcut in thrall to her, and-“ Shame was burning in her golden eyes, lowered, on her cheeks, saturated the apologetic, self-recriminatory way she spoke.

Alarmed, Blue had to raise her voice and call Yellow’s name several times before Yellow seemed to hear her. She froze in the act of another apology, the words dying in her mouth.

“Yellow, it looks very detailed,” Blue repeated, firmly, “but _I have no idea what it is_.”

“Oh.” Yellow blinked. She blushed brilliantly. “It’s a suit. For-for you, Blue. It-uh… There are these tubes of water, like this,” she was illustrating as she spoke, “that connect to you like this, like rods, you see, and – made of some flexible material, something watertight, I was thinking that new wire insulator that that morganite found on Tantalus III – and you move the water in the rods instead of your arms, and it helps you move, like this –“ The quick crude sketch she was drawing demonstrated the pull of muscle and the rod of water being moved in unison.

“It’s an exoskeleton,” said Blue in dawning wonder, “to support me. I could – I could move, using my hydrokinesis, I could _walk_.”

“Yes, quite,” said Yellow. “That was rather the intention.” She clasped her hands nervously behind her back, looking for all the world like a naughty quartz presenting a faulty report to their agate.

Blue was caught in a storm of emotions, dawning joy, and a numb, wordless awe. “Yellow,” she heard herself say rather faintly, “Come here, just, come here.”

Diffidently, Yellow approached, kneeling beside Blue. Slowly, and with difficulty, Blue reached up and hugged her, slumping against Yellow’s chest with a strained gasp. Yellow wrapped her arms around Blue, supporting her reflexively, and pressed her nose into Blue’s hair.

“Is it – all right?” Yellow asked, quietly.

“It’s wonderful. _You’re_ wonderful.” Blue’s voice sounded thin and choked. Her eyes burned. Yellow said nothing, but let Blue hide her face against Yellow’s shoulder, and pretended not to notice when Blue’s thin frame shook in the attempt to restrain tears.

“Can you actually make this?” Blue asked finally, rather watery, not quite daring to hope.

“Of course.” Yellow drew back and cupped Blue’s face between her hands, her gold tawny eyes intent and fierce. Her breath was hot as it fanned over Blue’s face, her eyes hotter still. She had a way of looking at Blue like Blue was the only thing that mattered in the world, like Blue was the only thing that existed, just the two of them, together in this private moment that seemed to stretch on forever.

“Good,” whispered Blue. She cleared her throat, breaking the moment, “I will look forward to being able to hit you for the stupid comment you made.”

“What?” Yellow looked bewildered.

“It wasn’t your fault,” said Blue. Immediately Yellow turned their head away, the beginnings of a protest on her lips. Blue spoke over her. “I poofed because White threw us both into the wall with considerable force. It’s not the first time that White has made me reform and I don’t think it will be the last. What’s the use of blaming yourself for things you can’t change?”

“It doesn’t work that way, Blue,” said Yellow. “If she’d asked me to roll over and crack my gem, I would have. I was useless. If she had actually wanted to hurt us –“

“But she didn’t, and she wouldn’t,” Blue said. “White – White looks after the things that are hers. You’ve seen how she is with her pearls. We’re not like real diamonds to her, we’re like… big pearls.”

“I am, even if you aren’t,” said Yellow miserably. “I behaved like a pearl, back there. If you hadn’t done that _thing_ to make us big…”

“It’s called fusion,” said Blue softly. “We… fused.”

Yellow looked at her, and Blue saw that she didn’t understand what had happened, and what words could be possibly used to explain what they’d done? It was fusion, taboo, illicit, dangerous, and Blue had led blindly trusting and naive Yellow right into it.

“If anything, it’s my fault,” she said. “No, you don’t understand – what we did… We can never do it again.”

Yellow opened her mouth to speak, then closed it and looked away. Suddenly the gaps between their knowledge seemed too vast, an unbridgeable gap. How could Blue explain to Yellow the impact of their ill-conceived fusion?

Blue remembered White’s rage, and said nothing. She leaned against Yellow, who held her tighter. Yellow wasn’t stupid, in fact she was the furthest thing from it. She had probably garnered an inkling.

There were moments that Blue considered, in hindsight, as perfect timing. Barely had the taboo subject of fusion died then a knock, so understandably heavy that they left no doubt who was behind it, rapped on the door. Three knocks, precise and clear.

Yellow and Blue jumped apart like naughty children. The door slid open, and White Diamond stood, silhouetted in the light from the corridor, her pale face cast in deep clefts of shadow, like primordial canyon with two fallen stars blazing at the very bottom. The dull jewels she wore glittered and clinked on their silver chains, and her cloak swept at her heels as she stepped forwards, austere, into the room, the door closing with a final sounding _hssh_ behind her.

Penned in, Blue and Yellow watched her with the same wariness they would afford to a baited predator circling particularly stupid prey. White did not approach, but remained pitted in shadow at the door, looming above them both like a pinnacle of perfection they could never reach.

“White Diamond,” said Yellow, rising smoothly to her feet, shoulders back, jaw tilted, almost unintentionally aggressive. Blue murmured her own greeting.

“Blue Diamond, Yellow Diamond,” White replied.

“You have good timing,” said Blue. “I am barely half an hour out of my gem.”

White inclined her head, her rich smooth voice as equal as ever. “I have cameras in this room. I like to watch you both.”

Yellow and Blue shot each other dubious looks. No one really seemed to know what to say in the wake of that revelation.

“I… see,” said Blue diplomatically. Yellow had gone the colour of sour milk.

Despite White’s apparent belief that this was perfectly normal behaviour, there was nevertheless a definite hesitation before White’s next words, carefully formal. “It pleases me to see you both restored. There is no lasting damage, I trust?”

“No, thank you,” said Blue. Yellow said nothing, but remained wary and tense.

Silence fell, and dragged its feet through the dust. No one spoke, and the atmosphere became decidedly awkward. Blue wanted to tell Yellow to at least back down a little, so it didn’t look so much like she was trying to threaten White, wanted to ask why White had even bothered to come.

Eventually, it was White who broke the silence. “I must ask –“ Uncharacteristically, her voice faltered. She shifted where she stood, and one pale hand came up to thumb at one of the brown jewels on her neck. Cautiously, she stepped forward, into the light. It struck her, gilded the lily, like a polished ivory statue. “You will not visit the west wing again,” she commanded in a voice more like her usual one.

Pugnacious, Yellow folded her arms, her stare unexpectedly sharp despite the fact that she had to tilt her head up to look White in the eye. “And may we ask why?”

“It is not unreasonable,” said White vaguely. 

She seemed oddly troubled, approaching Blue slowly. Yellow stiffened, half-shifting her stance in front of Blue protectively. White took absolutely no notice of Yellow’s posturing, and lowered herself, very gingerly, to sit on the floor beside Blue. Yellow, standing alone, looked out of place, and sat too, barely mollified and still scowling. They arranged themselves in an awkward trio, White staring off in the middle distance between them, her thumb absently running over the brown jewel hanging from her neck.

“The planet below us was not always barren,” began White, in the unsteady tone of someone who was not used to telling stories, “It is… the original home world. I emerged there, many thousands of years ago, when gem kind was still young and living in scattered tribes, constantly warring with each other...”

She trailed off. White’s gaze was pulled downwards, as if by an unseen weight. She did not look at them. Still, her hand fiddled with the jewel on its silver chain. The dull jewels flashed and sparkled faintly in the light – her belt buckle, the clasp of her cloak, around her neck, rings, set into her boots. Blue had never seen her unadorned with them.

“I was not the only diamond on home world at that time… I was found by another, when I was days old… She found me singing to the stars, said… _‘You’re doing it wrong. How do you expect to sing when you’re not even breathing from the gut properly?’_ ” An odd sort of expression crossed White’s face, as if she couldn’t decide whether to smile or to grimace. “It was something of a trade. I would fight for her and the gems she supported – even then, we were the leaders and protectors of lesser gems – and she would teach me to sing as sweetly as she did. Now, of course, I realise that she got the better end of the deal… I was perfect, and for as long as I remained at her side, we were unstoppable…”

“What was her name?” asked Blue, quietly. White startled a little, as if she had forgotten they were there.

“Brown Diamond,” she replied, and then, almost as if she was correcting herself, “She was a brown. Defective, of course, they all were back then, apart from me.”

Her hand around the jewel at her neck clenched into a fist, white-knuckled with strain. “It wasn’t like the empire today,” she told them, almost beseechingly, and her grey eyes lifted, almost soft, if it wasn’t White they were talking about, to look at Yellow. Yellow swallowed, avoided White’s eyes.

“Defective gems, raised without order, rebellious, selfish – they needed to be shown a new way, a better way. They had to be shown… _purity.”_ Now her eyes were strong again, burning, almost alight with a remembered religious fervour, sick. “When a plant sickens, the infected and dead must be… _cut away,_ to improve the breed. For the _greater good of gemkind, a certain few individuals had to be… sacrificed._ ”

White spoke urgently, passionately, as if the need to explain her reasons for the dreadful deed that Yellow had already worked out, her face whitening with unadulterated horror, fear, disgust – as if White was a _monster,_ was of the utmost importance to her.

“You shattered them. You shattered – you shattered all of the other diamonds. Because they were defective,” Yellow whispered. _Defective, like us,_ went unsaid, hung as heavy and potent as a guillotine blade between them.

Blue sucked in a horrified breath. Instinctively, she shrunk away from White, towards Yellow, whose arm clutched her close. Blue pressed against her, tried to remember how to form Green. If they took White by surprise –

“No, no, my dear Yellow, not because they were _defective!”_ White laughed, sharp and shrill and false. Her eyes were still sick with hate. “They were dangerous. They were _plotting against me._ It was self-defence! They were going to shatter me, they hated me because I was perfect… It was a matter of time… It had to be done. And hasn’t it been for the better? Look how we flourish now… They didn’t know their place. Not like you two, my dears, my flawed jewels… You are obedient. You are subservient to me. You know your place in the natural order is beneath me,for I am pure and you are not… You know this…”

“Yes, we do, my Diamond,” whispered Blue. Yellow’s head bowed, jerkily. She was trembling against Blue. “We are yours… To keep or shatter as you see fit… Your judgement is beyond question…”

White reached out, vindicated, as if bestowing holiness upon them, and gathered them to her. Yellow’s spine bent stiffly into the embrace, then, almost longingly, she melted into White, who kissed the top of her head. Blue, slumped against her side, tried to breathe past the overwhelming song of White’s thunderous presence. Being close to her was like living in the eye of a storm – the air tasted of ozone and electric.

The song of her gem was overpoweringly loud, but this close, Blue began to realise that there was a strange dissonance to it. As if it were not one song, but many. She opened her eyes, wincing a little at the warped song. The dull brown jewel at White Diamond’s neck glittered subtly in the light. This close, Blue realised it was hazed all over with cracks, as if it were shattered pieces, stuck together. In fact, thought Blue, it almost seemed as if the strange dissonance in White Diamond’s gemsong was coming from the shattered gems that Blue Diamond had always taken for ugly ornaments.

White Diamond kept her possessions close. The shattered diamonds from the mural were all right here, decorating their murderer like gory trophies.

“They were not like you, my dear flawed jewels,” crooned White Diamond. “You know your place.”

Blue bit down a scream of horror as Brown Diamond’s shattered gem in its ornamental silver casing fell against her cheek. Beside her, she heard Yellow whisper rapturous agreement.

“They left me no choice,” White Diamond murmured. “They would not consent to being kept.”


End file.
